


Rock You

by istia



Series: Rare Pairs [6]
Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon Setting, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Walter O'Brien, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 10:23:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2769536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/istia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Walter wakes in the night feeling on edge, he knows what he needs to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rock You

He woke with a start, thinking he'd heard his phone buzz, but a glance at the bedside table showed it sitting there dark, still plugged into the charger. He stretched out a hand for it, unplugging it, but a check of recent activity showed nothing.

A dream? Or all in his head? Though he wasn't the one who tended to go flaky under stress--

He'd kicked away the covers and was pulling his pants on over his boxers a moment later without conscious thought. He buttoned his shirt as he left his apartment, pausing only to lock the door. He fingered his phone in his jacket pocket as he walked to his car, but decided against calling. It was--he checked his watch--well past midnight. Late to call, if he was wrong.

He knew he wasn't wrong.

But that was all right because he also knew where to go. In the unlikely event he was mistaken in _that_ hypothesis, then he'd phone.

The roads were mostly empty this late, but he kept to the speed limit, rubbing the last bits of sleep from his eyes as he drove. He felt the first uncertainty when he arrived at the Scorpion base and found it dark and seemingly lifeless. Frowning as he got out of his car in the deserted parking area, he looked around, taking in its emptiness, with nothing breaking the silence but the disembodied sound of a cricket chirping in some dark, unseen space. He sometimes thought that crickets announcing their presence while invisible to the eye was like walking through a crowd of normals: they were all around him, yet he remained always alone.

Except not wholly. Not these days, with his team.

The door was unlocked. He frowned again and stepped from the half-lit parking lot into more intense darkness. By the thin light coming in the banks of windows, he navigated to the nearest desk and turned on a lamp. His rubber soles were quiet on the concrete floor, but he didn't need to worry about stealth because Toby was right there, across the room, blinking at him as soon as the light came on.

Toby didn't pause in his incessant pacing, though. He just stared at Walter from across the desktops and equipment, his eyes burning. He could see Toby's mouth moving, but whatever he was muttering to himself was too quiet to hear.

"Hey." Walter pitched his voice low as he took a step closer. "Why didn't you call me? Or come to me?"

Toby laughed like sand scraping glass. "I didn't know--wasn't sure--if that was a thing I could do anymore."

Walter swallowed the reflex pain, taking a breath so he could keep his voice even. "It's always a thing you can do. It's always a thing you fucking _should_ do." He paused, tilting his head as he studied Toby's jerky movements. "You want to come--"

Toby froze momentarily, staring at him with eyes blown wide. "No. No, I feel...safe here. Ridiculously. Your new place is cold--"

Walter scowled at him. "No, it's not."

Toby squinted at him. " _Metaphorically_. It _feels_ cold to me. It's an emotion. You wouldn't understand." At least his voice was Toby at his snarkiest, even if the rest of him was off.

Walter looked around at the brick walls, industrial windows, iron staircase, and cement floor. He shrugged. "And this place feels warm."

Toby's voice was scratchy with exhaustion. "Subjectively, and emotionally speaking, _yes_."

"Okay. I get it."

"No, you don't." Toby was still powering his way back and forth, but his feet were dragging. Sometimes he stumbled; his steps were erratic, off whatever course he was pursuing so he sometimes banged a hip or thigh against the corner of a desk. He'd just rub the spot absently and keep going.

Walter winced. "Maybe not." He pursed his lips. "But I get you."

He turned away and went up the stairs to the closet in the small back room they were using as a supply space. When he dropped the two body pillows down from the open landing to the main floor, Toby froze, staring at them lying atop each other haphazardly. Walter went back into the room for the duvet. When he headed down the stairs, his steps on the metal treads echoing from the high ceiling in dull clunks, Toby was kicking the big pillows across the floor between the desks. He kicked them over to the back corner, the farthest spot from both the windows and the door; the most protected area in the open space.

Walter detoured to lock the door.

Toby was pacing again when Walter turned around. Toby's steps were quick and light and his hands were fluttering, possibly in tune to his subvocal muttering. He turned sharply to intersect Walter on his way back across the room from the door, stepping in front of him so Walter was forced to a stop.

"I hate those stupid pillows. Why can't we use mattresses like normal people?"

"We're normal now?"

Toby's eyes bore into him, burning and unamused.

Walter spread his hands placatingly. "Because mattresses are too heavy and bulky to store and cart around--"

"You mean hide."

"--and hide. The pillows are thicker and softer, anyway."

"They're stupid. An absurd concept. I hate them."

"No, you don't."

Toby's eyes were dilated in the dim light. They bored into Walter's eyes with the intensity of imminent meltdown. Gooseflesh prickled along Walter's spine and his shoulders tightened.

"I really, really do. I tell you that every goddamned time."

"And yet...."

Toby tilted his head, birdlike, eyes wide and assessing. Walter stiffened his legs for balance, preparing himself, but still rocked back as Toby catapulted himself at Walter and grabbed his face between both his hands. Toby's palms were cool and smooth against his skin, palms pressed firmly to Walter's cheeks, but the tips of Toby's long fingers stroked into the hair at his temples with discombobulating tenderness.

"I hate you, too." Toby's voice was matter of fact.

"Yeah, yeah. I know."

"You're such a fucking jerk."

Walter grinned, crooked and cautious, feeling the first hint of the ground solidifying under his feet, of emerging into known territory, out of the wilderness full of swamps and traps. "Ditto, buddy."

"A sociopathic, detached, insensitive jerk."

Toby's head darted forward, quick as a bird, but his mouth was gentle against Walter's. Walter parted his lips, tasting the familiarity of coffee and whiskey on Toby's darting tongue. Toby pulled back too soon, restlessness in his tense body and quivering touch, but he didn't move away. Toby just stood staring at him with the lost look that made Walter's gut ache.

He diverted onto safer ground. "Did you eat tonight? And drink enough water?"

Toby blinked at him like he was trying to parse the sentences. "Sylvester wanted pancakes."

"For _dinner_?"

"Yes, for dinner, you stick-in-the-mud dinosaur! Why the hell not? And Happy wouldn't let me leave the restaurant until I'd drunk an entire glass of water." He pulled a face. "She took my whiskey away, Walter, and drank it herself and made the server take my coffee away before I managed to get more than a sip."

Walter chuckled and freed a hand from the duvet bundled in his arms to wrap his fingers carefully around Toby's wrist, feeling the reassuring rhythm of his pulse.

"How about we lie down? It's late."

"I don't want to lie down."

"I do."

"So lie down. I'm not stopping you doing whatever the hell you want. Or--here's a revolutionary idea--go home to your bed and lie down in it. What are you even doing here?"

Toby pulled his wrist free and went back to weaving rapidly between and around the lab tables and desks. Walter turned his back and walked over to the pillows. He bent over and untied his shoes, then pulled them off and set them against the wall, lined up with their sides touching and toes against the baseboard. Turning back, he nudged the body pillows into an L-shape, with one lying lengthwise against the wall and the other stretching out into the room at a right-angle in the corner. He shook the duvet out and dropped it over the pillows, then bent and pulled up the pillow stretching out into the room so a third of it was resting upright against the wall in the vee of the corner. 

He turned around and watched Toby while unzipping his pants and sliding them off. He folded them, then hung them over the back of a chair, smoothing the wrinkles out with a downward stroke of his hand, then unbuttoned and shed his shirt, hanging it over the back of a nearby chair.

Sleeping upstairs would've been better. The room up there had an actual closet with hangers, plus it was darker and way more private and protected.

But he wouldn't be able to get Toby up there, not right now. 

He straightened and studied Toby's peripatetic course for a minute, looking for a pattern, but wasn't surprised not to find one, just random, fitful shifts. It might've seemed dancelike, Toby's lean body making quick turns on heels and toes, the grace of his hand movements, except for the unbalanced wobbles.

Walter bit his lip. "D'you want the light off?"

"Of course I do. I had it turned off. You're the one who put it on."

Walter crossed the room to switch off the desk lamp and let his eyes adjust. The bank of colored windows glowed with the light of the waxing gibbous moon. Toby's hi-tops were stained with color as he powered through the elongated, lit rectangles sprawling across the floor. His skin glowed momentarily as though he weren't quite substantial, and Walter's breath hitched, his hands closing into fists at his sides as he fought an impulse to rush over and pull Toby to safety.

Hold Toby against his body, anchor him to the refuge of Walter's own grounded corporeality.

Then Toby moved out of the light into shadows, becoming an inky blot; hidden, no longer disturbingly exposed and vulnerable. Walter let his pent breath free and turned away resolutely. The only danger to Toby here was Toby. But Toby would be fine; he was here now and would make sure.

He settled on the propped-up pillow. Stretching his legs out in front of himself, he rested his back and head against the cushioned wall and pulled the duvet half over himself while keeping an eye on Toby.

He stilled and waited, hands folded in his lap.

Toby paced for another twenty-three minutes, though it was less walking than shambling and lurching by the time he finally stopped dead, staring up at the windows. Then, with a sharp turn on his heel, he came straight to Walter. Kicking off his shoes, Toby pulled off his socks one-by-one by stepping on the toes with his other foot, then wriggled out of his pants. Walter looked up at him as Toby stood over him, face blank as he stared over Walter's head at the wall, looking again like a half-tamed bird uncertain if it should settle or flee.

Walter swallowed a lump in his throat. "You look ridiculous standing there in nothing but a T-shirt and your hat."

Toby started, then stared down at him, face too shadowed for Walter to pick up any expression; only the gleam of his eyes caught the light. "There's nothing ridiculous about my hat. My hat completes me."

Toby took it off, though, and laid it on the nearest table. With a lithe movement, he pulled off his T-shirt and flung it haphazardly toward the same table. He missed, of course, and it fell in a puddle of white on the floor. Walter snorted, but Toby ignored both him and the shirt, kneeling on the body pillow against the wall as Walter lifted the duvet out of the way, then folding himself down lengthwise on it with a sigh.

Walter waited as Toby settled himself on his side facing the wall and shoved his head aggressively into Walter's lap. Walter spread the duvet over both of them, making sure it covered Toby from his tucked-up feet to over his head. Toby liked to cocoon when he was melting down.

"I'll suck your dick later." Toby's voice was muffled as he squirmed into a comfortable position.

Walter laughed, hoarse and tired. "Much later. And not here."

"Definitely not here. In a bed. Mine or yours."

"Mine." Walter was adamant on that score.

He could feel Toby's chuckle shiver through his thighs where Toby's cheek was nestled.

"Your freak-outs at the controlled chaos in my place are hilarious."

"Your place is chaos, pure and simple. There's nothing controlled about it. It's _random_ , Toby. In other words, a complete, meaningless mess."

"Hilarious. Mr. Unflappable meets his match. You're not even the actual OCD neat-freak among us."

"Shut up and go to sleep. It's late." He didn't try to keep the warmth out of his voice.

He rested his hand along the prickly curve of Toby's jaw under the duvet, and rubbed his thumb against the soft skin above Toby's stubbled cheek.

Toby murmured something indistinguishable, then sighed. "Thanks, you know, for coming. I knew you would."

Walter rested his head back against the wall. "You should've called me. It was just a fluke that I woke up and figured I should come. You can't just depend on me always knowing when you're going to need me."

"Are you claiming to be prescient now?"

"Of course not." He frowned down at the duvet-wrapped, relaxed, warm bundle in his lap.

"Of course not," Toby echoed, muffled voice sounding thready and distant. "We both know it wasn't just chance that you woke up and decided to come over here. You read my body language after the mission today, cataloged what was going on the way you always, uniquely, do, and your subconscious stored the information and extrapolated that you should check up on me later, then proceeded to wake you at an appropriate time."

"Right." He couldn't even shoot Toby's theorizing down because he knew he was probably right. "You still should've called me. You should always fucking call me, Toby, just in case my subconscious lets us both down one day."

Toby's snort was pure disbelief, but then he was quiet for long enough that Walter thought he'd drifted off. He closed his own eyes, settling himself for sleep, but slit his eyes open at Toby's quiet voice:

"I was going to call, but I broke my phone."

"Yeah?" He grimaced, picturing Toby exploding with anger, flinging it against the wall--

"That stupid jackass braying kept going off, so I took it out to turn off the blood-pressure app, but I dropped it."

Read: his hands were shaking. Walter pressed his lips together to stop any words escaping, instead stroking his thumb across Toby's cheek again and tightening his other hand where it was curved around the back of Toby's head. Some of the tension eased out of Toby where he was pressed against Walter.

"Then I stepped on it." Toby's voice was rueful and Walter laughed.

He sobered right away, though. "You didn't think of driving over?"

"Yeah, I did, but I wasn't really fit for it, even with Happy confiscating my whiskey. You would've just yelled that I should've waited and trusted you to come for me the way you always do."

That was probably, uncomfortably, true. And no taxies would bother cruising this empty warehouse area late at night, while the nearest bus service ended around eleven. Walter sighed and looked around the dim, cavernous room.

"We'll get some spare phones and stash them here." He looked down at the covered lump of Toby in his lap. "Are you going to be able to sleep now?"

Toby's hair tickled against his thighs as he nodded. "You're not going to leave, right?"

A frisson of cold shivered down Walter's back. Toby scared him on the rare occasions when his ego and narcissism deserted him, making him seem broken and defenseless as a snared rabbit. He took a moment to make sure his voice was steady.

"You're an idiot."

Toby relaxed a smidgen. "But at least I'm your idiot." Now he just sounded tired.

"Lucky me."

"Don't forget the dick-sucking later, you dick."

"You hope. You should be so lucky."

"Oh, I will be."

All right, then: disaster diverted for both of them. Toby's innate confidence was flooding back and he was well on his way to being his usual condescending jerk.

Walter breathed a sigh of silent relief. "Go to sleep, moron."

"Your moron. Just like you're mine."

"Yeah."

Toby's breathing became deep and even within minutes and his body relaxed into heaviness in Walter's lap. Warm and oddly comfy, Walter let himself sink into the familiarity and slept, his hand resting against Toby's face and Toby's fingers limp against his hip inside the leg of Walter's boxers.

:::::::

He jerked awake, tensing, his hands closing automatically, protectively, over Toby, who was still a warm, covered weight in his lap.

"It's okay. It's just me."

Relief flooded him as he recognized the quiet voice and came down from alert. Blinking up at Cabe, he tensed again at seeing the thoughtful look on his face.

Long rays of light slanting through the east-facing windows strewed colored rectangles across the grey floor, lighting even this back corner enough to see.

"It's early." He looked back up at Cabe. "What are you doing here?"

"I forgot my briefcase when we rushed out yesterday." Cabe was watching him steadily.

Walter tried not to fidget, not to react in any way, as Cabe's eyes traveled the length of the duvet-wrapped form curled in his lap.

A glance down reassured him that Toby was still completely covered, not even the top of his dark, curly hair showing.

He looked up again, but Cabe wasn't looking at him. He followed Cabe's eyes to Toby's hat sitting on the closest desk and his breath hitched. His gut clenched despite himself as he watched Cabe's eyes move to Toby's T-shirt and jeans abandoned on the floor near where he'd kicked off his hi-tops, one lying on its side.

He was acutely aware of his bare shoulders above the duvet and of the pause as Cabe's eyes passed over his pants folded over the chair back.

Cabe met his eyes again. Walter maintained the contact with a blank, steady look of his own.

"Make a habit of sleeping here?" Cabe was keeping his voice pitched low.

"Not exactly a habit."

He stayed alert as he watched Cabe's eyes move from his face to the pillows and duvet, then back to him. "Look pretty prepared for its not being a habit."

"Emergency use."

Cabe nodded. For a few moments, they just stared at each other, then Cabe gave a tight smile. "Well, it's good to be prepared. I'll just get my case and get out of your hair."

He walked around several of the desks, looking around the floor as well as on their tops, before finally ducking down to reach under one of them and straightening with his briefcase in his hand. Walter was mildly surprised it had, apparently, actually been left here after Cabe put it down yesterday before they'd all rushed out.

"Sorry to disturb your Sunday. I'll lock the door behind myself."

Cabe nodded at him and Walter nodded back, then watched as Cabe turned away and strode to the door. Cabe closed it quietly behind himself, and Walter heard the lock turn. He sighed and lifted a hand to rub his face, feeling the roughness of his stubble. He'd slept well, but he was ready for a shower and a supersized mug of black coffee. Not necessarily in that order.

"He didn't know it was me, right? It could've been anybody under here."

"Right. It's completely possible I'd be sleeping on our lab's concrete floor with any incidental stranger."

"Okay, okay. But he doesn't know it wasn't Happy. Or Sylvester. Or even Paige, who could've left Ralph with a sitter--"

"He saw your hat." Exasperated, he added, "And your clothes on the floor where you threw them. Along with noticing mine hanging far more neatly, but just as obviously, over the chairs."

He felt Toby's sigh of warm air through the thin fabric of his boxers. "So what you're saying is he knows, one, that it was me and, two, that we're cozied up here mostly naked. And that this isn't an unusual...thing."

"I told him it wasn't usual."

"I heard you."

"Well, then." He bit out the words. "He knows what he knows. What difference does it make?"

"None! Not to me." Toby threw the duvet off his head and turned onto his back, looking up at him rumpled and flushed. "I'm sorry you've been outed, though."

"Come on. You don't actually think I care, do you?"

Toby's voice was too carefully neutral. "We've never told Happy or Sylvester."

Walter couldn't hold back a grin. "You can't seriously think Happy doesn't know! Sylvester probably does, too. He likely noticed right after the first time, but didn't realize it wasn't something everybody knew, so just took it for granted."

Toby huffed a laugh, the tension bleeding out of him. Toby sobered and reached his hand up, running the back of his fingers down Walter's cheek. He slid his hand behind Walter's neck, gripping lightly, and Walter didn't resist as Toby pulled his head down slowly. Walter opened his mouth and they kissed with the sweetness Toby went to extraordinary lengths to hide from most of the world.

Then, as always with Toby and intimacy, the moment passed and he retreated into action, climbing to his feet, the duvet falling away to pool around Walter as Toby stretched. Walter looked up the length of Toby's body, currently twisting like a snake, arms up. When his gaze reached Toby's face, Toby was grinning down at him and he waggled his eyebrows as their eyes met.

Toby was singing softly: " _\--like a hurricane_."

"You're the damned definition of annoying." Walter got to his feet and headed for his wrinkle-free clothes. "Please stop with that stupid song."

So, of course, Toby immediately changed tack. Pausing, half-dressed, he set his feet wide apart, bent his knees, thrust his pelvis forward, and strummed an air guitar. " _Shook you all night long!_ "

Walter rolled his eyes even as he laughed. "It's tragic how stuck in the '80's you are musically."

"Hey, I'll have you know I'm tailoring my repertoire to my audience, buddy."

"Come on, come on, get your pants on and let's get out of here."

Walter gathered up the two pillows, still warm from their bodies, and headed for the stairs.

"Yes! Off we go to your place and its soul-chilling, reprehensible neatness, though at least there's the compensation of your extremely hedonistic bed."

"Food first." Walter glanced back from halfway up the stairs as Toby's light steps danced behind him.

Toby paused, arms full of the bundled-up duvet, and stared up at him with wide eyes. "You'd rather have eggs and hash browns than my mouth on your dick?"

Walter quirked a half-smile at him. "Got to build up your stamina if you're going to keep up with me, Toby." He ran the rest of the way up the stairs and into the storage room at top speed.

"Oh, you think so, huh?"

Toby pounded up the stairs after him and stuffed the duvet into the closet on top of the body pillows, then slammed the door shut before they could tumble back out. He whirled on Walter and cupped his face between his hands. Walter stilled, leaning into the touch and watching Toby's eyes, which had lost their manic restlessness from last night and were back to their normal keep-up-with-me-if-you-can challenge.

Walter licked his lips.

Toby spoke in a serious voice. "It's Sunday, Walt. We can stay in bed _all the damned day long_."

Walter grinned. "Yes, we can."

He followed Toby's dance down the stairs, knowing Toby's focused attention would be wandering far afield after a couple of hours max, if that much, which was fine because his own restlessness tended to kick in right in tune with Toby's. He had no idea how anybody managed to endure the boredom of spending hours awake in bed, but had written it off years ago in the "normals" column as one of those mysteries he didn't deem worth bothering to try to understand.

" _I am going to rock you!_ "

"Do not! I'm warning you!"

He jumped down the stairs two-at-a-time after Toby and chased him to the door. Toby unlocked it and tore the door open, his voice wafting back, loud and obnoxious and as inviting as the crisp morning air:

" _\--like a hurricane_ , Walter! Hurry the fuck up!"


End file.
